Historically, corporate attempts at preventing unionization succeeded up to a point, and that point has long passed into the fog of history. Google will have to come up with something novel if they want to keep a union from forming.

Remember, this is a company that was central to the "techtopus" pay-fixing/raise-suppressing scandal. When the author says that Google will attempt to bring their fist down hard upon their employees, the author does not mean that Google will succeed, only that Google will try and that their attempts will be bland but bold.